Stuff the sexist film industry. I don’t need them

The whip-smart girls who I knew and loved lived full and complex lives and yet, every day we applied thick audition make-up and paraded around for the chance to play flimsy, myopic facades of ourselves.

I’d had enough.

I took off overseas and within months, had committed myself to making my first feature in France completely independently but backed by those who shared my youthful will in the face of an arcane screen industry.

Holing myself up in a freezing house in the Czech mountains, I worked to distil that frustration into my first ever screenplay. I had no idea what to do next but I correctly intuited that I was ineligible for support from the domestic screen agencies. With virtually no filmmaking CV combined with a swift and strange working methodology, the normal progression from development to production seemed even more foreign. So I decided to raise the money myself.

In an ideas economy, she who dares, wins.

My producer, who is also my sister, began sending the script around. We learned to dodge lazy comparisons to Girls, or Sex and the City — because all young women act and are the same (we don’t and we’re not).

We were committed to making an Australian film, but we were going to do it completely differently.

A lifetime of standing on freezing sets with all male crews had taught me that I needed to flip the script. We hunted for emerging females and cut deals — I couldn’t pay them much but I would put whatever we had left into the best equipment and best gear available. We would make a film that defied its budget and by doing so, be an undeniable example of what women can do when backed. Work begets work and my film Drama was to be that leg up they needed to keep that career progressing.

For a month our crew slept in eight rooms on air mattresses, my sister and I sharing a bed. We woke at four in the morning and got home at about midnight. My focus puller, Origa, who still remains my hero of the film, had just eight weeks earlier had her first baby. She was the hardest working, most committed crew member I have ever encountered. During breaks she would explain that providing an example for her daughter was the most important thing.

Surrounded by a crew of women who themselves had hustled their way onto that set eased the isolation I felt when my decisions were questioned by men who outstripped me in age and experience. Often, we’d share a knowing wink when for the fourth time I would explain that I did understand the demands of such a long take, and yes, it was actually what I wanted.

I shrugged it off when I heard contractors sniggering and calling us “Sexy Crew”, as if a group of women in shorts is only there for entertainment.

It’s been a difficult road to allow myself to understand that what I have and am encountering is the weight of the glass ceiling. It’s important to note that men don’t set out to discriminate. But when they have been surrounded by people of their own gender their entire career, it’s just too easy to assume that when I ask for something that they wouldn’t choose, I’m stupid or inexperienced or foolish. And equally that when I speak up about this treatment, I’m being histrionic, ridiculous or a whinger.

I have fought exceptionally hard to have men in senior positions even watch my content, let alone assess it.

When you like and fund war dramas, why would you watch a film about a young woman in Paris made by a crew of 50 per cent females?

We embody the same “battler” spirit we culturally claim to support and yet, in this example, when it’s a battle we don’t want to admit or acknowledge it exists, the fight seems unimportant.

Recently, my sister and I were invited into the offices of the same funding bodies we bypassed in development. After six international festival screenings and a whole lot of great reviews and wonderful press, it seemed that finally our struggle might be at least partially alleviated.

We were turned down. Having come this far without them, I refuse to be shaken at the final hurdle.

I’ve hustled to get my film on the minimum amount of screens I need to classify it as having a theatrical release — imperative for future funding. In the meantime, I’m again surrounding myself with hard working and focused women who have committed to making the release an example of female achievement, and a testament to the struggles we encounter in trying to diversify a screen culture that has dominated unchanged for decades.

I have consistently been called a “disrupter” throughout the life cycle of the film, as if my actions come simply from a desire to raze the system to the ground. I never envisaged the film would be tantamount to a match but now, on the cusp of its release, I am ready to strike.

Drama launches November 17 at selected cinemas nationally

Visit: www.afilmcalleddrama.com

Originally published as Stuff the sexist film industry. I don’t need them